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Philosophy Quotes
"Its a mathematical fact that two negatives make a positive so even under adverse circumstances think positively."
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"When we lose our innocence - when we start feeling the weight of the atmosphere and learn that there's death in the pot - we take leave of our sense."
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"One of the schools in Tlön has reached the point of denying time. It reasons that the present is undefined, that the future has no other reality than as present hope, that the past is no more than present memory."
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"It is a sound like loneliness-enough to let you know you're there, but not enough to fill you with life."
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"A Paradox, the doughnut hole. Empty space, once, but now they've learned to market even that. A minus quantity; nothing, rendered edible. I wondered if they might be used-metaphorically, of course-to demonstrate the existence of God. Does naming a sphere of nothingness transmute it into being?"
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"The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation."
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"So," said the Russian, after regaining is composure, "the lesson of the model is that the universe--all its matter and forms of energy--arise out of thought."
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"But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine."
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"Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth."
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"The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for wisdom, and this means a short roll call of names; Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epicurus, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche."
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"Nothing you can lose by dying is half so precious as the readiness to die which is man's charter of nobility."
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"In a universe in which past, present, and future came into existence all at once, complete from beginning to end, with all possible outcomes of every life woven through the tapestry, there is no chance, only choice, no luck, but only consequences."
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"It is not a case of finding the meaning for the moments, but giving the moments meaning."
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"The missing piece in his stomach hurt so much-and eventually he stopped thinking about the Theorem and wondered only how something that isn't there can hurt you."
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"You do not know what will happen if you take down the walls; you cannot see through to the other side, don't know whether it will bring freedom or ruin, resolution or chaos. It might be paradise or destruction. Take down the walls. Otherwise you must live closely, in fear, building barricades against the unknown, saying prayers against the darkness, speaking verse of terror and tightness. Otherwise you may never know hell, but you will not find heaven, either."
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"Who can tell? It may be that there must always be growth - and that if one does not grow kinder and wiser and greater, then the growth must be the other way, fostering the evil things. Or it may be that the life they all led was too shut in, too folded back upon itself - without breadth or vision. Or it may be that, like a disease of crops, it is contagious, that first one and then another is sickened."
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"My own mind is my own church."
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"Slight not what is near though aiming at what is far."
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"There was no black or white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. People were just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster."
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"Not all sons were like their fathers. A son chose the man he would be.Not all daughters were like their fathers. A daughter monster chose the monster she would be."
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"To you, I'm an atheist.To God, I'm the loyal opposition."
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"Might and wrong combined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction."
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"To be understood is to prostitute oneself."
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"The course of every intellectual if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough ends in the obvious from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred."
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"You will follow me, if we are what we are, you and I, if we live, if the world exists, if you know the meaning of this moment and can't let it slip by, as others let it slip, into the senselessness of the unwilled and unreached."
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"If a fact does not modify your logic on being known, either you don't believe the fact or it is not a fact."
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"Humility is hard when someone has things like wealth, knowledge, & recognition that may tempt him/her behave and act pridefully. Otherwise, worrying about pride without these factors that predispose you, it is just an illusion."
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"When humanity dies, what happens to all the people?"
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"The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides."
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"Since there is no real silence, Silence will contain all the sounds, All the words, all the languages, All knowledge, all memory."
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"If God is the mystery of the universe, these mysteries, we're tackling these mysteries one by one. If you're going to stay religious at the end of the conversation, God has to mean more to you than just where science has yet to tread."
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"We see, surrounding the narrow raft illuminated by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated on the individual soul, which must struggle alone, with what of courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears. Victory, in this struggle with the powers of darkness, is the true baptism into the glorious company of heroes, the true initiation into the overmastering beauty of human existence."
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"Samsa certainly had no idea what lay ahead. He was in the dark about everything: the future, of course, but the present and the past as well . What was right, and what was wrong? Just learning how to dress was a riddle."
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"Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure."
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"You cannot fast-forward time, you cannot rewind it, and you cannot pause it; you can only waste or benefit from it."
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"As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die."
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"Whether the gentleman is capable or not, he is loved all the same; conversely the petty man is loathed all the same."
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"Random violence is incredibly infectious."
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"Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us."
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"I asked God to help me understand the story of the forest and what it means to be a tree in that story."
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"I, on the contrary, have been convinced for some time that perfection is not produced except marginally and by chance; therefore it deserves no interest at all, the true nature of things being revealed only in disintegration."
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"The world was a vale of tears-it always had been."
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"Thus he has two standpoints from which he can consider himself...: first, as belonging to the world of sense, under the laws of nature (heteronomy), and, second, as belonging to the intelligible world under laws which, independent of nature, are not empirical but founded only on reason."
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"A tree's shade is worth more than the knowledge of truth, my sons, for a tree's shade is true while it lasts, and the knowledge of truth is false in its very truth. The leaves' greenness is worth more, for a right understanding, than a great thought, for the leaves, greenness is something you can show others, but you can never show them a great thought. We are born without knowing how to talk and we die without having known how to express ourselves. Our life runs its course between the silence of one who cannot speak and the silence of one who wasn't understood, and around it hovers - like a bee where there are no flowers - a useless, inscrutable destiny."
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"The truth can be known or realized but cannot be change or modify."
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"When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent."
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"Our lives teach us who we are." I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own ... then you might as well be dead."
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"A life lived without borders is a life lived in captivity."
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"Jesus invited us not to a picnic, but to a pilgrimage. He offered us, not an excursion, but an execution. Our Savior said that we would have to be ready to die to self, sin, and the world."
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"You can never know everything. Part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that. A portion of knowledge lies in going on anyway."
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